CHAPTER XXXIV.
DECEMBER 21st .-- No further disturbance has taken place amongst the men.
For a few hours the fish appeared again, and we caught a great many of them, and stored them away in an empty barrel.

This addition to our stock of provisions makes us hope that food, at least, will not fail us.
Usually the nights in the tropics are cool, but to-day, as evening drew on, the wonted freshness did not return, but the air remained stifling and oppressive, whilst heavy masses of vapour hung over the water.
There was no moonlight; there would be a new moon at half-past one in the morning, but the night was singularly dark, except for dazzling flashes of summer lightning that from time to time illumined the horizon far and wide.

There was, however, no answering roll of thunder, and the silence of the atmosphere seemed almost awful, For a couple of hours, in the vain hope of catching a breath of air, Miss Herbey, Andre Letourneur, and I, sat watching the imposing struggle of the electric vapours.

The clouds appeared like embattled turrets crested with flame, and the very sailors, coarse-minded men as they were, seemed struck with the grandeur of the spectacle, and regarded attentively, though with an anxious eye, the preliminary tokens of a coming storm.

Until midnight we kept our seats upon the stern of the raft, whilst the lightning ever and again shed around us a livid glare similar to that produced by adding salt to lighted alcohol.
"Are you afraid of a storm, Miss Herbey ?" said Andre to the girl.
"No, Mr.Andre, my feelings are always rather those of awe than of fear," she replied.